Suspense and Thriller

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Are you looking for a bone-chilling mystery? Look no further—these titles will send chills up your spine.

The Dead of Winter by Jane Addams
Against her better judgement, Rina Martin accepts an invitation to Aikensthorpe, a country house hotel with a sinister reputation. Gathered there are a collection of experts in the esoteric; their plan is to re-enact the incident in 1872 that left one man dead and another mad. Rina, unimpressed by the company and their techniques, is relieved when her friend DI MacGregor comes to rescue her. But then a blizzard traps them in the house, and Edwin Holmes, grand old man of psychical research, is found murdered in his bed. (catalog summary)

Deep Winter: A Novel by Samuel W. Gailey
In this compelling rural noir, a devastating murder in an isolated small town sets off an unstoppable chain of events made more complicated—and more dangerous—by the town's dark secrets. (catalog summary)

Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel by Tess Gerritsen
Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli receives the grim news that Maura's charred body has been found in a mountain ravine. Shocked and grieving, Jane is determined to learn what happened to her friend. The investigation plunges Jane into the twisted history of Kingdom Come, Wyoming, where a gruesome discovery lies buried beneath the snow. (catalog summary)

This readalike is in response to a customer's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids. You can browse other book matches here.

Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Through journal entries sixteen-year-old Miranda describes her family's struggle to survive after a meteor hits the moon, causing worldwide tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. (catalog summary)

If you'd like to read a book like Life as We Knew It, check out these other science fiction titles for teens:

The 5th Wave by Richard Yancey
Cassie Sullivan, the survivor of an alien invasion, must rescue her young brother from the enemy with help from a boy who may be one of them. (catalog summary)

After the Red Rain by Barry Lyga
Set in a future world of environmental collapse and mass poverty, where a mysterious boy named Rose discovers he possesses inhuman powers that can irrevocably change the lives of everyone on the planet. (catalog summary)

This readalike is in response to a customer's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids. You can browse other book matches here.

Westworld, is a science fiction thriller that premiered on October 2nd, 2016. The series, created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, is inspired by the 1973 film of the same title written by Michael Crichton about a futuristic theme park populated by artificial beings. Nolan and Joy serve as executive producers along with J. J. Abrams, Jerry Weintraub and Bryan Burk. The first season consists of ten episodes.

The program takes place in fictional Westworld, a technologically advanced, Western-themed amusement park populated completely by synthetic androids dubbed "hosts". Westworld caters to high-paying visitors dubbed "newcomers" (or just "guests"), who can do whatever they wish within the park, without fear of retaliation from the hosts. (Wikipedia)

Once you've finished Westworld on December 2nd, here are a few fiction books involving technology, the Old West, robots, and dangerous adventures.

Anything Goes by Richard S. Wheeler
The cowboys, gold miners, outlaws, gunmen, prostitutes, and marshals who populate the Wild West never see much big-city entertainment. Most towns are too wild and rowdy for entertainers to enter, let alone perform in. All that is about to change. August Beausoleil and his colleague, Charles Pomerantz, have taken the Beausoleil Brothers Follies to the remote mining towns of Montana, far from the powerful impresarios who own the talent and control the theaters on the big vaudeville circuits. Their cast includes a collection of has-beens and second-tier performers: Mary Mabel Markey, the shopworn singer now a little out of breath; Wayne Windsor, "The Profile," who favors his audiences with just one side of his face while needling them with acerbic dialogue; Harry the Juggler, who went from tossing teacups to tossing scimitars; Mrs. McGivers and her capuchin monkey band; and the Wildroot Sisters, born to show business and managed by a stage mother who drives August mad. Though the towns are starved for entertainment, the Follies struggles to fill seats as the show grinds from town to town. Just when the company is desperate for fresh talent, a mysterious young woman astonishes everyone with her exquisite voice. The Wild West will never be the same. They've seen comics, gorgeous singers, and scimitar-tossing jugglers. Now if the troupers can only make it back East . . . alive! (catalog summary)

Many people find one of the most enjoyable aspects of Halloween to be the myriad creatures associated with it. Legendary villains such as Dracula, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein, and zombies of all stripes emerge on or about October 31st in the forms of costumes, films, and books. America’s tendency to associate such creatures with Halloween is so embedded in our culture that we frequently forget that most of these creatures—or at least the versions of them we best remember—are relatively recent creations that are often less than two centuries old. This series explores the origins and evolution of Halloween’s and Hollywood's best-loved ghouls and beasts.

This readalike is in response to a customer's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form, and a librarian will email suggested titles to you.Available for adults, teens, and kids. You can browse the book matches here.

Pretty Little Liars by Sarah Shepard
Everyone has something to hide--especially high school juniors Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna.

Spencer covets her sister's boyfriend. Aria's fantasizing about her English teacher. Emily's crushing on the new girl at school. And Hanna uses some ugly tricks to stay beautiful. But they've all kept an even bigger secret since their friend Alison vanished. How do I know? Because I know everything about the bad girls they were and the naughty girls they are now. And guess what? I'm telling. (catalog summary)

If you like the Pretty Little Liars series, then you might enjoy the following titles:

The A-List by Zoey Dean
Seventeen-year-old blueblood Anna Percy leaves Manhattan to spend the second half of her senior year with her father in Los Angeles and quickly becomes involved in the lives of the rich and famous at Beverly Hills High School. (catalog summary)

Billy Zeet has quite a reputation. And he got it the hard way—he earned it. Despite having a heart of gold, Billy’s rap sheet includes more petty crimes than even he can remember. He can silently break into a locked second-story window with one hand tied behind his back. And nobody can slip unseen through the dark like Billy. He’s practically a shadow. Nobody can skip school quite like Billy, either. Being the invisible man at school has put him in the seventh grade for the second time. But he has an expansive vocabulary—of cuss words.

When Phyllis Reynolds was in first grade, she had a hard time making sense of the stories her teacher wrote on the blackboard. Those little, squiggly characters danced crazily across the open space and didn't mean a thing to her. One day, her teacher asked her to read a story out loud. Phyllis didn't hesitate for a second. She plunged into an exciting story-- her own story-- about a cat and a tree and an autumn day. The teacher shook her head sadly at Phyllis. No, she hadn't gotten it. But she had gotten it-- the desire to tell stories. In time, she did learn to read, and soon she was writing her own books on notebook paper. Phyllis had found a love for writing that she has never lost through the tough times and the good.

Film noir is not easily defined. The actual words come from French and mean "black cinema." It was in France during the post-war years that the term was used to describe a certain set of Hollywood films that were saturated with a darkness and cynicism that was not seen before. These movies included The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), Laura (1944), and Murder, My Sweet (1944).

Benjamin Weaver, retired prize fighter and now professional thief-taker, is back in action on the streets of 18th-century London. What seemed a simple job—cheating a card cheat—turns nightmarish when Weaver discovers he’s the one who has been rooked in David Liss' The Devil’s Company. The mysterious and wealthy Mr. Jerome Cobb has a very dangerous plan in which Weaver is an essential player. His physical skills, intelligence, connections, and indeed his very character are necessary to make the plan a success.

No one else will do, and in order to secure his cooperation, Cobb and his cronies have drawn a diabolical net around those Weaver holds dear. The Devil's Company referred to in the title is none other than the terrifically wealthy East India Trading Company. Their near monopoly on imports of tea, fabrics, and other luxury items began more than 100 years before this story opens in 1722, and it is this fortress-like institution that Weaver must infiltrate.

Give them pleasure. Same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.

--Alfred Hitchcock in an interview with the American Film Institute

Alfred Hitchcock, universally acknowledged as “The Master of Suspense”, was born in the suburbs of London on August 13, 1899. Hitchcock’s first job within the film industry was as a title-card designer for the Famous Players Lasky film company. Hitchock went on to hold roles as assistant director, script writer, art director, and editor before directing his first solo film in 1925. In 1926, Hitchcock’s third film, The Lodger, was his first big success and established him as a maker of thrillers. Over the next fifty years, Hitchcock completed fifty additional feature films.